Abstract
I explain what exactly constrains presupposition projection in compound sentences and argue that the presuppositions that do not project are conditionalized, giving rise to inferable conditional presuppositions. I combine elements of (Gazdar in Pragmatics: implicature, presupposition, and logical form. Academic Press, New York 1979) and (van der Sandt in Context and presupposition. Croom Helm, London 1988) which, together with an additional, independently motivated assumption, make it possible to construct an analysis that makes correct predictions. The core of my proposal is as follows: When a speaker felicitously utters a compound sentence whose constituent clauses (considered in isolation) require presuppositions, the hearer will infer that the speaker presupposes those propositions, unless the sentence contains some element that makes the hearer realize that, if the speaker actually presupposed them, she would be either uninformative or inconsistent in her beliefs. In these cases, the propositions that would have been presupposed, had the clauses been uttered in isolation, will not be presupposed, i.e. the clausal presuppositions will not project.
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Notes
On the de re-reading, which I consider is the preferred interpretation.
I assume (Stalnaker 1978)’s view that the hearer presupposes everything the speaker presupposes. I understand the notion of ‘accommodation’ as recognition on the part of the hearer that a certain proposition holds in the context, so that the context is not updated with a presupposition at the moment when the hearer infers it, but rather the hearer realizes at that moment what the context is like.
There are exceptions of course; for instance, journalistic style is characterized by passing many assertions off as presupposed.
(Lassiter 2012)’s probabilistic approach to presupposition accommodation leaves the presuppositional interpretation of sentences like (25a) unaccounted for. In other cases, the predictions that follow from my proposal are fully compatible with his results.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Rob van der Sandt, Henk Zeevat and Louise McNally for their thoughtful comments. I also gratefully acknowledge the financial help provided by the Basque Government – Gobierno Vasco. Departamento de Educación, Universidades e Investigación. Dirección de Política Científica (DKR-2012-2).
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Garcia-Odon, A. Presupposition Projection and Conditionalization. Topoi 35, 145–156 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-014-9279-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-014-9279-y